


Luckier Than We Deserve

by hrtiu



Series: Stronger than Fate [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Ahsoka and Rex after the Empire falls, Din asks Ahsoka to help with the child, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, I just want them to be happy, Parental Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25218553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrtiu/pseuds/hrtiu
Summary: Din has a lead on a teacher/caretaker/whatever for the kid, and once he gets the kid settled, he plans to move on with his life. It’s not that he doesn’t care about the little guy—the opposite is true. Din knows the child’s life would be better without a man like him in it.Ahsoka is always willing to help those in need, but she has selfish hopes regarding the rumored powerful young force user she’s about to meet. If the child’s healing abilities are as impressive as she’s heard, then there might be hope for one of her oldest, dearest friends.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Ahsoka Tano
Series: Stronger than Fate [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858399
Comments: 87
Kudos: 377





	1. Din

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to wait to post this until I'd finished the whole thing, but then I had a super crappy day today so here goes. This fic will be four chapters, and I've got it all planned out if not written. I love all these characters and I just want them to be happy *sobs* Also I'm a bit new to Clone Wars/Rebels lore, so let me know if I got something wrong. I hope you enjoy!

They planned to meet in a bar. Din thought that was a strange place to meet a Jedi, but he supposed secret temples or mystic caves might not always be convenient. He scanned the dank pub, leaving his inspection of the agreed-upon booth for last. A hooded woman already sat in the booth, her back to the corner giving her a view of the entire room. The hood obscured her face, but he could tell from the distinctive silhouette that she was togruta.

He strode over to the woman and slid smoothly into the booth, leaning back and resting his arm confidently over the back of the seat. “I heard you can help me.”

“That depends,” the togruta woman said, her ochre features tense and uncompromising. “What do you need from me, and what can you do for me?”

Din’s eyes narrowed. If this woman really was a Jedi, she wasn’t really fitting in with their reputation as serene monks. Was this the kind of person he wanted teaching the kid? Din wasn’t much better, to be fair, but that’s part of why he was looking for the kid’s people in the first place.

“I’ve got this kid, and he’s got unique abilities. I don’t know how to help him develop them, and I heard you could help,” Din said.

“Mmhmm.”

“What are you looking for in return?” Din asked.

The togruta leaned forward in the booth, her fingers interlocking in front of her on the table. The motion revealed more of her face, and Din estimated her to be in her early forties, though he’d never been great at estimating togruta age. Now that he had a better look at her, he had to revise his earlier estimation of her demeanor. She may not possess the unflappable serenity he was expecting, but there was definitely something… unique about her. There was a depth to her eyes and a weight to her presence that spoke of pain, experience, and wisdom. In many ways that was more what he would want for the kid than what his picture of a perfect Jedi could provide.

“This child…” she said, “I heard he has a special talent for healing.”

Was that unusual? Din had no idea what Jedi abilities or training included. What if what the kid did wasn’t even related to the Jedi?

“Yeah. He does,” Din said.

The woman’s white facial markings furrowed as she considered. “Can I see him?”

“Will you help?”

“I’m considering it, but I can’t commit before I see him.”

Din huffed under his helmet, annoyed but unsurprised. He stood from the booth. “Fine. Come on.”

The togruta woman followed Din out of the cantina and to the docking bay where his ship was docked. She didn’t hesitate to follow him up the ramp and into the Razor Crest, and seemed unsurprised at the sight of the kid’s floating pram in the living quarters. When Din opened the pram to reveal the sleeping child, though, she gasped.

“This… This is… Where did you find this child?” she asked.

“He was a bounty. The Imps wanted him for experiments or... something else.”

Her blue eyes were wide in awe, an expression that seemed foreign to her face. “And you said he can heal?”

“Yes. He’s healed multiple fatal wounds.”

The togruta woman stared at the child for a long moment, and Din resisted the urge to fidget. Was she going to help him or not? What was so unusual about the child? He’d assumed that the child’s abilities were normal Jedi fare, but maybe he’d been wrong. He’d never even heard of the Jedi a year ago, after all.

“I can help him, if he heals my friend,” she said.

Din frowned, though the woman couldn’t see it under his helmet. It was a relatively simple request, and one he’d be happy to agree to if he could guarantee it would happen. He didn’t know if the kid could heal on command or what the limits of his abilities were. Hell, Din didn’t even know if he’d be able to communicate the request to the little guy.

“The kid doesn’t always understand me, and I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with your friend. It might not work,” he said.

“I understand. As long as we try, I’ll do it,” the togruta woman said. She turned to Din, her jaw set in determination. She held her hand out to Din, and he shook it.

“You’ve got a deal,” Din said.

“My name is Ahsoka Tano,” she said, still holding his hand.

Din hesitated a moment. If he was going to entrust the kid to this woman, he should at least be able to trust her with his name.

“...Din Djarin.”

* * *

Ahsoka Tano knew a surprising amount about Mandalorian culture, Din discovered during their several-day journey to the system her friend lived in.

“Death Watch, eh? That must have been an interesting childhood,” she said, leaning back on her makeshift bench in the Razor Crest’s miniscule living quarters.

The child babbled happily in his pram next to her while Din kept careful watch from across the small space.

Din shrugged. “I guess so. Don’t remember much of any other kind of childhood.”

“Well, organizations change, don’t they?” Ahsoka said, tossing a stray arc wrench up in the air and catching it as she talked. “When I first ran into Death Watch they were terrorists trying to kill me, but by the end of the Clone Wars I’d allied with some of them to take back Mandalore.”

“You were involved in the Siege of Mandalore?”

“Yeah, me and Bo-Katan Kryze spearheaded it.”

Din’s head spun at the realization that he was sitting across from a piece of Mandalorian history, and he was thankful he had this helmet to disguise his surprise. “I’d never heard that Jedi were involved. I thought Mandalorians and Jedi were enemies.”

“Like I said, organizations change. The Jedi and the Mandalorians have a long and complicated history, much of it contentious. But during the siege we were allies. And I wasn’t a Jedi anymore by then.”

Din started. “Wait… You’re not a Jedi? Then how are you going to help the kid?”

Ahsoka crossed her arms and shot him a long-suffering look. “Being able to use the Force and being a Jedi are two different things. I can still teach the child. And besides, I may not be a Jedi anymore but I was trained as one. If that’s what the child wants, I can set him down the right path.”

As if to emphasize her point, she tossed the arc wrench up again, then kept it levitating in the air with a casually outstretched hand. She floated the wrench over to the child’s pram and lowered it gently into his lap and he burbled in excitement. Din frowned.

“Whatever we do we’re going to need to make plans for his future,” Ahsoka continued. “His species live a very long time, and I’ll die before he’s ready to be off on his own.”

Din nodded. “Yeah I figured that.”

It irked him to think it, but Din knew he should probably leave all that to Ahsoka. He wanted to get to know her better, to make sure she was capable of caring for the child, but he already had to admit she seemed much better equipped to meet the child’s needs than he was. Din was a bounty hunter, a man raised on violence and struggle, and if he tried to raise this kid himself, he knew he’d screw it up. The kid would be better off without him.

“How come you need the kid to heal your friend?” Din asked, searching for a change of subject. “Isn’t healing also some kind of Jedi skill?”

“It is,” Ahsoka said thoughtfully. “But it’s one of the rarer ones. Very few people have a gift for it, and on top of that this child happens to be of a race uniquely powerful in the Force.”

“Really?” Din said, looking down at the small, green-skinned, bat-eared creature with a raised eyebrow.

Ahsoka nodded, smiling. “Yes. The most powerful member of the Jedi Council during the Clone Wars was the same race. I’ve never met someone stronger in the Force.”

“So you can’t heal your friend yourself?”

“I couldn’t even heal a skinned knee,” Ahsoka said wryly.

The kid lifted his tiny tri-clawed hand and floated the arc wrench back over to Ahsoka, who accepted it floating over her own hand and smiled indulgently back at the child. The two of them started a strange game of hover catch, and Din silently watched. She seemed good with the kid. Gentle but no-nonsense. And she obviously possessed some of the same skills the child had—she’d be able to help the kid with things Din couldn’t even begin to approach.

“What’s his name?” Ahsoka asked, eyes still on the wrench that floated between herself and the pram.

“I don’t know,” Din said.

“So what do you call him?”

“...Kid.”

Ahsoka snorted. “Really? You said you’ve been with him a year already. You haven’t thought of something better to call him?”

Din didn’t answer. He was the kid’s father, according to The Way, but he viewed it as a temporary guardianship. He was looking for the kid’s “people”—whether that meant his race or those with similar abilities—and once he found the right person that guardianship would pass to them. Naming the kid felt like something his permanent parent should do. Din wasn’t cut out to raise the kid. The galaxy had conspired to make him a stranger to warmth, peace, comfort—all things he felt instinctively this child needed. He could protect him for a while, but he wasn’t worthy to be the kid’s father. He wasn’t worthy to give him a name.

Ahsoka walked over to the pram and knelt in front of the kid, nuzzling his tiny nose with hers.

“You should have a name, shouldn’t you?” she said in a gushing, tender voice. The kid giggled.

“You can’t rush something like that,” Din said. “Don’t want to pick the wrong name.”

Ahsoka stood and nodded in his direction. “I can certainly agree with that.”

* * *

After a few days they arrived on Kamino, a water-covered land beyond the Outer Rim that Din had never heard of before. They entered the lower atmosphere and flew over a vast expanse of blue water towards the coordinates Ahsoka provided, and Din wondered what their final destination might look like.

“How did your friend decide to live here?” he asked.

“Kamino wasn’t always as obscure as it is now,” Ahsoka responded, her eyes on the horizon. “It was important during the clone wars. This was where all the clones were… produced.”

“Hmm,” Din said.

He kept flying towards their destination’s coordinates, but as they drew closer, no floating city or land mass appeared visible on the watery surface.

“Are you sure you have the right-?”

“There!” Ahsoka said, pointing to the ocean below them.

“Where?”

“Just…” Ahsoka huffed in frustration, then shooed Din out of the pilot’s seat, grabbing the controls and bringing them down to the surface.

“Hey-!” Din’s protest died in his throat as a tiny building came into view, the modest structure built atop a small metal platform suspended on stilts over the water. There was just enough space on the platform to land, but only just.

“Sorry,” Ahsoka said as she maneuvered the Razor Crest onto the platform, “It’s a little tricky to spot, so I thought I’d save you the trouble.”

“...Sure,” Din said, fighting down the nausea their quick descent had induced. He didn’t want to show any weakness in front of her.

They exited the Razor Crest, Din holding the kid in his arms and Ahsoka shouldering her pack. The grey sky chose that moment to start raining, and together they made their way towards the small durasteel home at the far end of the platform. It was a round, hut-like dwelling with a huge metal lightning rod on top, and Din looked warily back up at the sulky sky.

“Hurry inside, the thunderstorm’s coming,” a voice called from the building.

The front door to the home opened and an old man emerged, his snow-white hair gleaming even in the gloomy light. His hair stood in stark contrast to his tan, weather-beaten skin, the deep lines on his face raising Din’s estimate of his age to at least seventy.

Hunched over to protect the child from the rain, Din followed Ahsoka into the building and the old man shut the door behind them. As soon as the door shut, Ahsoka pulled the old man into a tight embrace.

“Rex,” she said with the relief of someone coming home from a long journey.

The man, “Rex,” returned the hug, his full beard brushing up against her lek. “It’s good to see you again.”

He pulled away from Ahsoka and turned to Din. “And you’ve brought a guest.” He cast a measuring gaze over Din, his eyes widening as they fell to the child in Din’s arms.

“Commander... is that…?” he said, almost reverently.

“Yeah, um… Rex, this is Din Djarin and his ward. The child doesn’t have a name, but you’re right—he is like Master Yoda,” Ahsoka said.

“Wow! That’s amazing. Never thought I’d never see another of… whatever General Yoda was. So, what do you need from me?”

“We don’t need anything from you, Rex. We actually came because I was hoping this child could help you.”

“Help me?” the old man asked, confused.

Din was curious, too. Rex was old, but seemed otherwise in good health. And callous though the thought was, Rex was old enough that the urgency Ahsoka expressed towards healing him seemed… misplaced. This man wouldn’t live too much longer in this galaxy, healthy or no.

“The child has a special gift for healing,” Ahsoka said slowly, carefully.

Rex’s brows furrowed, then raised as he realized Ahsoka’s meaning. “I don’t think that’s something that can be healed, Commander.”

Ahsoka frowned. “Well we have to at least try.”

Rex shook his head sadly. “We really don’t.”

“Mind filling me in?” Din asked impatiently.

Ahsoka turned to Din, grimace still on her face. She pointed to Rex. “He’s a clone. They age faster than regular humans. He should be around the same age as me, but instead he looks like he’s got one foot in the grave already.”

“Hey!” Rex said, offended.

“I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing the kid can heal…” Din said doubtfully.

“I know, but we’re going to at least try,” Ahsoka said.

“Commander-” Rex said.

“Stop calling me that.” Ahsoka bit out with a sharpness that silenced the spartan living room.

Rex took a reflexive step back from Ahsoka, surprise and hurt evident on his prematurely aged features. Din turned his head towards the door, arm tightening protectively around the kid.

“Maybe we should step outside,” he said, sensing the kid’s distress at the tense atmosphere.

“No,” Rex said, tearing his eyes from Ahsoka. “A storm’s coming. The thunderstorms here aren’t the kind anyone should be outside in. Comman—Sorry, Ahsoka—Let’s talk in my room. Mr. Djarin, was it? Make yourself comfortable.”

Din nodded to Rex, and Rex and Ahsoka left the room. Din let out a heavy sigh and sat down on a beat up sofa along the far side of the room, carefully setting the kid down beside him. The kid looked up at him, long green ears exaggerating the motion and jiggling in that distinct way that even Din could only describe as adorable. His giant black eyes looked up at Din, a question in their inscrutable depths. Din shook his head.

“I dunno either, kid. I guess we’ll find out.”


	2. Rex

Rex ushered Ahsoka into his room and shut the door behind her, his knees aching in protest against the short distance he’d walked to find some privacy. Ahsoka strode into the room with her typical self-possession and sat on his bed—the only piece of furniture available. Rex hobbled inside and carefully lowered himself down beside her, stubbornly refusing the hand she held out to help him.

He wondered what she saw in this little room of his. It was tiny and almost painfully utilitarian, but Rex found it comforting. He’d never had much personal space--not in the Grand Army of the Republic, not in hiding after Order 66, and not with the Rebellion.

His old helmet rested on the small table next to his bed, each tally and scratch marring its surface as familiar as his own face. Next to it was a holo of the 501st with him, General Skywalker, and Ahsoka at the front of the ranks. There was a lot of pain behind that image, but it contained people he never wanted to forget.

“Rex, why not just give it a try?” Ahsoka asked, breaking the silence.

Rex sighed. “I’m old and tired, and it probably won’t work.”

“You being old and tired is exactly the problem I’m trying to fix,” she said.

“It’s not a problem, it’s just the natural order of things.”

“Pardon me, but whatever genetic mutations they made to tweak your aging were not _natural_.”

Rex shrugged. “Natural to the clones, at least. We weren’t— _aren’t_ —like other humans. We have our own normal.”

Ahsoka’s shoulders slumped and her eyes fell to her lap. “So what, you don’t _want_ to live longer? You’re just giving up? What do you have to lose?”

Rex was silent for a long moment, and the air pressed down on him with the weight of the electrical storm outside.

“I don’t have a deathwish,” he said slowly, solemnly. “Something that self destructive wouldn’t be desirable programming for the perfect soldier.” Rex picked up the chip that projected the holo of the 501st and held it in his hands, the holo projecting into his face and casting his old, weathered features into the middle of the bygone group. “But sometimes I think it would have been better if I’d gone down on the ship with them.”

Ahsoka tensed on the bed beside him, and he knew without looking that her features were closing up the way they always did when she was trying to hide her feelings. It was no use, of course. He knew what he’d said had hurt her. He’d said it anyway, trusting her resilience. He knew she could handle pain.

“I’ve thought long and hard about that day, and I don’t have any easy answers,” Ahsoka said. “My life isn’t worth the hundreds of lives lost on that ship. Does that mean I should have just let you kill me? How would things have been different if I hadn’t released Maul?

“I still don’t know the answer. What I do know is that everyone serving on that ship cared about each other and was loyal to each other. It wasn’t our fault—any of it. We were all put in a situation where we had to make impossible choices—choices that hurt and killed either way. And the only person at fault for that was Darth Sidious.”

Rex half-listened as images of the past flashed before his eyes: men congratulating each other on another successful mission after Mandalore, Jesse convincing the medical droid he should be cleared for duty after being tortured by Maul, a line of orange-painted helmets, all chasing down the very woman they’d meant to honor. These were his last memories of his brothers. His genetics and training had rendered him essentially immune to battle-induced mental illness, but not to sorrow.

Rex put the holo chip back on the little nightstand and closed his eyes, squeezing them shut to halt the torrent of memories. It was already so long ago—how had time passed so quickly?

Ahsoka seemed to be waiting for Rex to say something, but after several beats of silence she continued on herself. “Rex, do you really wish you’d died that day?”

“No,” Rex said, and as he said it he realized the truth of it. “What I wish most is that I’d taken Fives’ warning more seriously. Maybe all of this could have been prevented. No, I don’t regret living through Order 66. I just don’t always feel like I deserved to survive.”

Ahsoka stood quickly from the bed and Rex looked up at her, startled at her anxious energy. She rounded on him, her big blue eyes steeled and flinty, and she brought her hands to her hips like she was a commander again, about to chew out a shiny for a rookie mistake.

“Maybe we don’t deserve to be the last ones standing, but we are,” she said, “And I’ll be damned if I let that go to waste. For Fives, for Jesse, for Tup, for Echo… I’m going to seize whatever happiness is offered me and I’m going to drag you with me if I have to.”

Rex’s eyes grew wide and he drew his mouth to a line, not sure what to say in the face of such fire. Maybe once he would have argued back with her, but he felt too old to withstand her now. She was right, after all. Rex’s survivor’s guilt wasn’t serving anyone. It certainly wasn’t helping any of his dead brothers.

Reading the resignation on his face, Ahsoka’s fire dimmed and her face softened. She sighed and knelt down in front of Rex, taking one of his wrinkled hands in hers. It was a foreign gesture to Rex—he’d never had a mother or father to reach for him like this, and this wasn’t his brothers’ way of showing affection. It felt nice, if a bit unnatural.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Ahsoka said gently. “If you really don’t want to do it I’m not going to force you. But I’m probably going to live another few decades at least, and if there’s any chance you can get through those decades with me then I’ll take it.”

Rex looked into her eyes, the blue gone soft now that the fire was gone. She had that tenderness about her that he’d always admired—not many people could be as tough as Ahsoka without losing some empathy. Another image of that fateful day returned to him, and he saw Ahsoka standing in front of the graves of his brothers, face hooded and tears in her eyes. He hadn’t abandoned her then, and he wouldn’t abandon her now.

He turned his brittle fingers in her grasp and wove them between hers. “Alright then. Let’s give it a shot.”

* * *

Ahsoka and Rex returned to the living room only to find the child and the Mandalorian asleep on the couch, the small green baby resting atop the Mandalorian’s chest as he reclined on the cushions. The child’s tiny claws dug into the fabric of the Mandalorian’s cloak, which had somehow spilled over his shoulder and become accessible to the child. If Rex had to guess, the tough bounty hunter had offered up his cloak as a toy to the little guy while they waited for Ahsoka and Rex to hash out their differences.

Something like regret—or maybe longing—stirred in Rex at the sight. With clone lives just above droids in terms of disposability, parenthood had never really been something worth considering to Rex or any of his brothers. Commanding and training his brothers had felt something like being a father, but Rex knew the family unit that so many normal people grew up with would never be something he’d experience himself. That was something he and Ahsoka had in common.

Heartwarming though the scene was, Rex was surprised to see the battle-hardened bounty hunter asleep in an unfamiliar home. Then he noticed the hand that slid silently down to his blaster while the Mandalorian’s posture remained slumped and relaxed. That was more like it.

“Hey, Mando,” Ahsoka said, and the Mandalorian—Din, Rex reminded himself—feigned groggily waking.

“Yeah?”

“Rex agreed to my plan.”

Din sat up straight and set the child in his lap, cocking his head to the side. “And what exactly is your plan?”

The child babbled, and all three adults turned their eyes to him. Rex wondered how they were supposed to communicate about advanced aging and Force healing with a child that couldn’t talk yet.

“I’ve been thinking about that since we set off for Kamino,” Ahsoka said. “The Force can be used to connect to the thoughts and minds of other beings. That’s how the so-called ‘Jedi mind trick’ works.”

“So you want to do some kind of mind meld with my kid?” Din asked, one arm pulling the child closer to his chest.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing sinister,” Ahsoka said. “All I’ll be doing is meditating next to him and seeing if he’s receptive to my call.”

Din let out a grunt that clearly said _sure, that doesn’t sound sinister at all,_ but didn’t object.

“If it makes you feel any better, Ahsoka and her master did all kinds of strange Force stuff around me all the time, and it always seemed to work out alright,” Rex said.

Ahsoka laughed, then sat down on the couch next to Din.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the rest of the day trying to connect with the child. We won’t work on the healing at all yet—just establishing an understanding,” she said.

The Mandalorian picked the child up from his lap and stood, hesitating only briefly before placing him in the floating pram by the couch.

“Alright,” he said. “He’s all yours.”

“Thank you,” Ahsoka said.

She scooted to the side of the couch closest the pram, then found a comfortable, cross-legged position and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply through her nose, and her chest rose and fell with each breath. Din watched from over by the doorway, his side leaned against the walls and his arms crossed. Rex left them to it to putter around his small kitchen, tidying up his already-spotless home. After a half hour or so of cleaning, he ran out of things and returned to the living room. The Mandalorian was still standing over by the door, his head slumped a little forward as he watched over the two Force users’ meditation session. Rex coughed, getting his attention, then gestured to him and started for the door at the other end of the room.

“Come on,” he said. “If this is anything like any of her other Force meditating sessions, this could take a while.”

Din followed Rex into the small kitchen and then through a hatch in the floor to the cellar.

“This is where I keep all my weapons,” Rex said as he descended the ladder into the bunker-like room. “We’re not underground, of course, but under water. It may not necessarily be safer than the rest of my home, but it’s certainly more secret.”

“Hmm.”

Din’s grunt was his only response as he climbed down after Rex. Once he looked at the wide array of blasters, grappling hooks, thermal detonators, and other implements of war mounted on the walls of the cellar, however, he let out a whistle of appreciation.

“Thought you might like it,” Rex said, satisfied.

“What’s a man living in the middle of the ocean like you going to do with all this?” Din asked.

Rex shrugged. “Not sure. I’d like to think if I needed to I’d be able to put up a good fight, but I’m not really in shape to use most of this very effectively any more. But I’m a soldier. That’s all I’ve ever been and that’s what I’ll die as. It’s hard to feel like a soldier without any weapons.”

“Sure you couldn’t stand to part with any of it?” Din asked, picking up an EMP grenade on the shelf and admiring it.

Rex laughed. “You’ve got a good eye. That’s a droid popper from the end of the Clone Wars. Battle droids aren’t used so much nowadays, so they don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

Din’s fingers closed around the grenade. “I don’t like droids,” he said, then set the grenade back down on the shelf. “...most droids, at least.”

“Take it if you like. I’ve got plenty.”

“Thanks,” Din said, “Maybe tomorrow I’ll grab a few.”

They fell silent and the Mandalorian continued to inspect Rex’s impressive collection while Rex leaned against the ladder and watched.

“Don’t worry too much about the little one,” Rex said after a few moments. “There’s no one I trust more than Ahsoka. Your kid’s in good hands.”

Din nodded in acknowledgment. He set a rifle he’d been inspecting back on its rack then turned to Rex, his face inscrutable as ever behind his helmet.

“Why didn’t you want to be healed?” he asked.

Rex shifted on his feet, trying to decide what level of honesty he wanted to display for this near stranger. “I guess… I never expected to live as long as I already have. Doubling my lifespan now? It seems like asking too much of the universe for little old me.”

“Ahsoka seems to disagree.”

“Yeah,” Rex said, a small smile playing at his lips. “She always saw us clones as people—sometimes even more than we did ourselves.”

“Hmm.”

“Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves for the benefit of the people who care about us,” Rex said.

The Mandalorian’s helmet remained facing Rex for a long moment, then dipped as his gaze fell to the floor. Rex had the distinct impression he was thinking of a small green creature upstairs.

“Yeah,” Din said.

* * *

Rex fixed dinner for his guests while Ahsoka meditated and Din further explored Rex’s weapon-filled cellar. The three adults converged on the fried krill and seaweed soup once Rex was done, but dinner was a quick, quiet affair. They all were used to brief, efficient mealtimes meant to minimize vulnerability to attack, and each of them also seemed to have much on their minds. The Mandalorian slurped his soup through a straw contraption and saved some fried krill to eat later in the privacy of his ship. Once Rex finished his soup, he collected the used dishes on the table and cleaned them before heading out the door. He hadn’t been around other people in so long, he was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

“The storm’s passed. I’ll be outside if you need me,” he said as he left.

Din executed his typical silent nod, but Ahsoka rose to her feet and followed after him.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked.

“Sure,” Rex said. Tired though he was, he would never say no to Ahsoka’s company.

Together they made their way to the platform in front of Rex’s house, and Rex rested against the railing that edged the platform and prevented the careless from falling into the sea. Ahsoka leaned next to him, her back to the railing, and looked over her shoulder at him, her face partially blocked by her lek. They’d grown so much longer than they used to be, and the blue and white pattern had lengthened and grown more complicated and distinct as she’d accumulated experience.

_In my book experience outranks everything._

“How did everything go with the child?” Rex asked.

Ahsoka bobbed her head from one side to the other, her eye markings raised in uncertainty. “Alright, I guess. We’ve definitely communicated, but he’s pretty young and it’s much harder to get complex ideas across.”

“So what happens next?”

“Tomorrow I want to give it a shot. It might not work right away, but I see no reason not to start trying. I also don’t want to test Din’s patience too much.”

“OK. Will I need to do anything?” Rex asked.

Ahsoka shook her head. “Just stand there and look pretty.”

One side of Rex’s mouth quirked upwards. It was good to have her around again.

He looked out at the calmed ocean waters, their roiling depths now hidden beneath the surface after having been churned up by the storm. Sometimes he thought he could catch fleeting glimpses of a memory when he stared into the water—bubbles, the glare of lights, an artificial umbilical cord for sustenance.

“If it doesn’t work,” Rex said, leaning further out across the railing, “how do we know when to call it quits?”

Ahsoka’s eyebrow markings turned downwards, and her jaw clenched. “We’ll try here for a week, then Din and I should get going. But I’m going to start training the child. I’ll keep coming back, keep trying again and again as the kid grows stronger.”

“Until the day I die?” Rex asked.

“Yes.”

Rex swallowed the lump in his throat, then turned around and leaned his back against the railing, matching Ahsoka’s posture.

“Why all this for me? Do you know how many clones in the 501st died? I’m just another one of them, no better and no worse. If this doesn’t work within a week, you should move on.”

“You’re _not_ just another clone,” Ahsoka said, turning towards him with flashing eyes. He always seemed to be making her angry these days. “None of you was ever ‘just another clone.’ Would you say that about Echo or Jesse? No. So stop saying it about yourself.”

“Look, I said I would give it a try, and I’m going to hold to that. I just don’t want you to waste your time and energy on this if it doesn’t work.”

“Rex, I have no interest in living the rest of my life without you.”

“Ok Commander, you’re being a little dramatic. General Skywalker rubbed off on you too much.”

“This is no time for jokes!”

“Why is this upsetting you so much?”

“Because I love you!”

Rex stopped short, his eyes widening in surprise. Ahsoka was right in front of him, breathing hard and leaning forward with fists clenched behind her. Since Order 66 and especially since her time in the World Between Worlds, Ahsoka had grown into an unfailingly composed, wise and collected woman. She seemed almost like a sage or a prophetess in his eyes, untouchable and unflappable. Right now that other-worldly goddess was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t seen her this emotional in decades.

Rex also tended to be on the stoic side, but he’d softened somewhat in his old age. In his youth he might have reacted to Ahsoka’s confession with discomfort and leaned on titles and protocol to avoid the situation, but he’d grown enough since then to be able to meet her halfway.

“I love you too, Commander,” he said with a small, affectionate smile.

He must have read something wrong, because Ahsoka frowned.

“No, you’re not understanding, Rex. I _love_ you,” she insisted.

Rex’s brows furrowed and he met Ahsoka’s piercing gaze with uncomprehending eyes. “What?”

Ahsoka’s head dropped to her chest and she sighed. The fierceness drained out of her, and when she raised her head again, there was a softness about her that Rex had never seen before. She raised a hand to Rex’s cheek and stroked her thumb slowly along his leathery, aged skin, and Rex couldn’t breathe.

“It came on so slowly, I don’t know when I realized it. But I think I first started loving you the day you came back from the Battle of Umbara,” she said. “I was sixteen, I think, and you were twelve, or twenty-four, or however you want to think about it.”

Comprehension of what Ahsoka was saying—of what it _meant_ —slowly dawned on Rex, but he still couldn’t find anything to say in response. That seemed fine for now, since Ahsoka wanted to talk.

“The battle had been horrific,” she continued. “I’d heard it was a bloodbath, and I was so happy to see you back safe and whole. You’d lost so many men, and been betrayed by your own Jedi general. I heard your debriefing, but I also heard from your men—from Fives and Jesse and the others who were there. You’d threaded that needle of duty to the mission and responsibility for your men masterfully. I’d never met someone so confident in their ideals, so full of integrity. I’d respected you a long time already, but that was when I started to think I might never meet someone I respected more.”

Rex swallowed nervously, his pulse hitching as Ahsoka’s fingers threatened to glide into the thin white hair he’d let start to grow out around the crown of his head. “I had no idea,” he managed to choke out.

“And I didn’t want you to know. I was a superior officer, and I wasn’t supposed to have attachments, and I was certain you saw me as more of a sister than anything else… And then of course there was the bizarre age situation that I didn’t know _what_ to think about.”

“But later, we were on the run together for _months_ after the war. You never said anything,” Rex said.

“I was responsible for the deaths of every 501st soldier on the _Venator_. I was devastated, and every time I looked at you all I could feel was guilt. I didn’t think you’d want me, and I didn’t think I deserved you. I didn’t think I deserved happiness,” Ahsoka said, her other hand rising to hold his other cheek. “But I do, and so do you.”

Rex met her warm gaze as long as he could, but eventually looked away. Ahsoka let go of his face and took a step backwards, giving him space to breathe. He wasn’t sure if that was a tradeoff he was happy about or not.

“I don’t expect anything,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”

Rex’s gaze fell to his gnarled, weathered hands, and his face contorted into a grimace. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Ahsoka looked up sharply, a bright beam of hope cutting through her tender expression. “Do you mean…?”

Rex shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know! But I would have at least appreciated some time to figure it out.”

Ahsoka’s face fell. “I’m sorry.”

They both fell still, and Rex turned back to face the railing so he could look out at the sea. The sun had almost disappeared behind the horizon, and the water was dark and temperamental. The day was almost gone, and time was almost up.

“You’re just doing this because you want to see me young and fit, aren’t you?” Rex said after a long silence, his gentle attempt at a joke easing some of the ache between them.

Ahsoka laughed a soft, half-hearted laugh. “That doesn’t matter to me. Even if this doesn’t work if you could accept me I’d want to spend the rest of your life with you.”

It was Rex’s turn to laugh. “If _I_ could accept _you_?”

Ahsoka turned around to look over the sea with Rex, and her hand found his as the orange-purple sunset played out in front of them. The sky was unusually clear after the afternoon’s fierce storm.

“Yes,” she said simply.

Rex didn’t respond, but he let his fingers tighten around hers. He couldn’t just open up his tightly-wound heart all at once, and she seemed to understand that. They said no more as the last rays of sunlight disappeared beneath the horizon and the first of Kamino’s three moons became visible in the darkening sky.

One celestial body died while the other ascended. Rex had spent a lot of time today thinking about the past, but maybe it was time to start considering the future.


	3. Ahsoka

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little longer, so I hope it doesn't throw the pacing off too much. Honestly I'm just happy I got anything published at all. I have a 2-month old and it's been... trying. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading!

Ahsoka woke to the sound of bubbling and popping coming from the kitchen. With a groan she stretched as far as the cramped couch she’d spent the night on allowed, then hauled herself upright.

“Rex?” she croaked.

The man in question popped his head out of the kitchen, looking far too awake this early in the morning. He was wearing a loose white woven shirt with an open neck and those scratchy tailored trousers only elderly men ever seemed to wear. Ahsoka let out a bittersweet chuckle at the sight. Rex really was getting old.

“Oh you’re up. Want some breakfast?” Rex said.

“Sure,” Ahsoka said, bringing her hand to her forehead and squeezing the sleep from her eyes.

“Will Din be joining us?”

Ahsoka shrugged. “I don’t know. He’ll come in when he’s ready I guess.”

Rex’s small home only had one couch, so Din had elected to sleep on the Razor Crest along with the child. There was space on the ship for Ahsoka, too, but the couch was reasonably comfortable and Ahsoka had wanted to stay closer to Rex.

Rex returned to the living room with a bowl of savory soup and some crispy wafers. Ahsoka accepted the soup and sniffed it appreciatively.

“This is so much better than what they served in the mess on the _Venator_ ,” she said.

“Well I’ve lived on my own for a while now. Had to learn to make my own food some time,” Rex said.

Ahsoka swallowed down several hearty spoonfuls of the broth, enjoying the meaty flavor on her tongue. Rex shoved her blankets to the side and sat down next to her on the couch—he must have already eaten.

“The food is reason enough to want to stay with you forever, Rex,” Ahsoka said, closing her eyes both to savor the soup more fully and to avoid seeing Rex’s reaction to her half-joke.

He laughed but didn’t say anything, revealing nothing of his final decision regarding Ahsoka’s confession the night before. That was fine. Ahsoka knew he needed time, and she was willing to give it to him. That didn’t change the fact that she hated waiting.

Rex’s front door creaked open and Din walked into the room carrying the child in one arm, the floating pram tailing in after him.

“Morning,” he said with a scratchy voice that could only be accompanied by bleary eyes.

Rex and Ahsoka parroted the greeting back at him, then Ahsoka closed her eyes and concentrated, reaching out towards the child.

 _Good morning_ , she sent him across their connection.

The child’s response was wordless, but he sent happy feelings of new beginnings and food and being refreshed and ready for a new day. Ahsoka smiled.

She opened her eyes and Din was setting the child in the pram while Rex looked on, a slight furrow to his aged brow belying his otherwise relaxed demeanor. Rex never showed even the slightest hint of nerves in the face of battle, but apparently the prospect of possibly living an extra few decades made him apprehensive.

“Hungry?” Rex asked.

“Already ate,” Din said, tucking the child into the pram with a warm blanket and turning back to Rex and Ahsoka. “So what’s the plan?”

“We might as well jump right in,” Ahsoka said.

Rex nodded, fidgeting in his seat on the couch. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing,” Ahsoka said, moving over to sit on the floor by the child. She fiddled with the console on the side of the pram, and it floated lower to the ground so she could see the child’s face. “Just sit there, and I’ll see if I can communicate what we need to the child.”

Din remained standing and crossed his arms across his chest, his head tilted slightly to the side. He seemed slightly annoyed, probably because while he had nothing to contribute to the day’s activities, he wouldn’t be letting the kid out of his sight.

Ahsoka tried to put the two anxious men out of her mind and focus solely on the small child beside her. She reached for his tiny clawed hand, and his three fingers wrapped around one of hers in a tight grip. She closed her eyes and reached out to him. Despite his young age, he was practically aglow with the Force, his natural aptitude and powerful presence already unmistakable.

The child’s thoughts were indistinct, but he seemed happy to connect with her, his presence burbling with welcome and excitement. Ahsoka returned his pleasant attitude, sharing her appreciation for him and her gratitude that they could spend this time communing together. She let them marinate in these warm feelings for a while, wanting to ease into making any demands of the child. After a sufficient period of time, Ahsoka let feelings of sorrow and concern seep through their connection.

The child’s reaction was immediate and strong. He shared in her worry, curiosity joining in with his sympathy as he wondered what the cause of her unhappiness was. Ahsoka couldn’t help but smile at how quick the child was to empathy and generosity. With a little guidance he would surely be a powerful source of Light in the galaxy. In answer to his question, Ahsoka sent an image of Rex across their connection.

The child recognized Rex, but he didn’t understand why Rex would make Ahsoka sad. Ahsoka took a deep breath and considered how best to share this next part. This would be the most difficult concept to communicate, she was sure. Concentrating as hard as she could, Ahsoka went through Rex’s life in her mind—his birth in the glass growth jars, his training among his identical brothers, his service in the GAR fighting and watching his brothers die for the Republic, Order 66 and his life on the run, and finally his continuing service to the Rebellion even as his health declined.

Young though the child was, he seemed to grasp that Rex’s life had been a difficult one, and Ahsoka felt his commiseration through their connection. But that wasn’t what she needed the child to understand. She needed the child to see not that Rex’s life had been difficult, but that it had been _accelerated_ and was being cut short. Ahsoka started to go through Rex’s life in her mind again, but faster this time. She did this several times, moving faster and faster and faster, then paused.

 _This isn’t how it should be_ , she thought. _He should have more time._

The child’s confusion suffused their connection, and Ahsoka knew he didn’t understand. She took a deep breath, and went through Rex’s life again, rushing through it and emphasizing his old age. When she got to the present, she showed him passing away here in this tiny home on this artificial island. _This is how things are._ Then she went through his life again, but slower this time. She erased the lines on his face, carefully showing him how he would have been at each time if he’d aged like most humans. She got to the present, showing him in this little house by himself, but looking like a normal forty-year-old instead of an old man. Then she continued onward, showing an imaginary, hoped-for future with many decades of well-earned peace and contentment to come. _This is how things should be._

The connection between Ahsoka and the child went still. He was thinking, she could tell, trying his best to understand what she was saying. Her thoughts were urgent, and he could sense how important this was to her, but he wasn’t fully connecting the dots. Ahsoka waited, knowing that it could take some time for the child to understand.

Ahsoka opened her eyes. Rex was still sitting on the couch, tension in his hunched shoulders and expression carefully blank. Din lurked in the corner, leaning against the wall with a forced casual posture.

“Rex, can you come over here?” Ahsoka asked.

Rex got up and walked over to the pram. “Here? What do I do?”

The child opened its huge black eyes and stretched his tiny hand out towards Rex.

“Take his hand,” Ahsoka said.

“Eheh, alright…” Rex said, obediently taking the child’s green hand in his gnarled one.

Ahsoka closed her eyes again and reached out for the child. Through the child she got a distant sense for Rex and his thoughts. She didn’t want to pry into the privacy of his mind, but the impressions the child was getting from the old soldier were relevant to the success of their mission.

“Rex, you need to show the child what you want,” Ahsoka said.

“What?” Rex asked.

“Think about how things are, then think about how you would like them to be.”

Rex paused for an uncomfortably long time. “...Ok.”

Ahsoka opened her eyes and looked up at Rex, uncertainty and anxiety clear on his face.

“Do you… do you want to be healed? Actually want it, for yourself?” she asked, scared of what he might say.

Rex avoided Ahsoka’s gaze for a long moment, and Ahsoka’s heart sank. Maybe she was pushing this too hard. If Rex didn’t want this, who was she to tell him he was wrong? Perhaps he was ready to go, ready to return to the fabric of the Force, and she was being selfish, forcing him to stay past his time for her own benefit.

She let go of the child’s hand and looked to the floor, letting her shoulders sink. She didn’t believe the old Jedi tenet that attachments were bad, but perhaps in this case she was holding onto her friend too tightly. She needed to let go.

“Ahsoka…” Rex said, his voice gently chiding.

She looked up at him, and the uncertainty on his face had been replaced by an understated tenderness that was so very _Rex_ it hurt.

“I want to stay,” he said, conviction firm in his face. He stood taller, his certainty removing ten years from his appearance.

He knelt down by the child’s pram and added a second hand to the first, holding the tiny child’s green claws in both hands. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, all tension bleeding from his weathered features. He said no more, but his lips moved in silent prayer, and Ahsoka could guess at what he was saying.

_I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me._

The Force worked in mysterious ways. Ahsoka didn’t know if advanced aging was the kind of thing a Force user could reverse, but she knew that if the Force willed it, all manner of strange things could happen. Her own trip to the World Between Worlds was evidence enough of that. She could only hope that the Force would be with Rex today—that of all of the hundreds of thousands of brothers who shared Rex’s DNA, he at least could avoid his undeserved fate.

Something changed in the atmosphere of the room, and Ahsoka knew that whether he would be healed or not, Rex’s fate would be determined in the next few minutes. She couldn’t bear to look and closed her eyes, trying to empty her mind and sink herself into the infinite peace of the Force. Something was happening, something strange and powerful, but she only squeezed her eyes shut tighter. She wouldn’t look _she wouldn’t look_. Many years of life and sorrow had taught Ahsoka that things didn’t always go the way she wanted, and she tried her best to prepare herself for disappointment. Despite years of experience, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to get past her devastation if this didn’t work.

“I’ll be damned...”

Din’s gruff voice broke through Ahsoka’s spiral, and she forced her eyes open.

“What happened?” Rex said, his voice breaking and drowsy like he’d only just woken up.

He was lying collapsed on the ground, arm over his face and blocking Ahsoka’s view. Her eyes went wide as she noticed the increased bulk to his arms and tautness to his skin. Tears stung at her eyes, and he moved his arm slowly away, revealing a wide nose, serious eyes, and sharp jaw as familiar to Ahsoka as her own face.

“Ahsoka?” Rex asked as he sat up, his voice betraying tentative hope with a heavy undercurrent of fear.

Ahsoka scrambled across the floor over to her friend, pulling him into her arms. He felt solid and sturdy, no longer paper-thin and like he might float away. He returned her embrace, his strong soldier’s arms holding her tighter than he ever had when she was his commander.

“Rex, it worked,” Ahsoka said over his shoulder, her lek rubbing up against the freshly-smooth skin of his cheek.

“I know,” Rex said.

He held her for several long moments, and Ahsoka tried not to cry. For all the battles lost and the friends gone in her life, this moment of joy eclipsed all the pain.

Rex pulled away and Ahsoka felt immediately bereft.

“Is the kid alright?” he asked.

Feeling terribly selfish for not thinking of the child sooner, Ahsoka turned around to see the Mandalorian bent over the pram to check on the unconscious child.

“His vitals are strong,” Din said tightly. “I should have known this might happen. He tends to lose energy when he does something big.

Ahsoka looked back at Rex’s distinguished nose, newly-thick eyebrows, and blond hair.

“Well this certainly qualifies,” she said.

“Will he recover?” Rex asked.

“If it’s anything like the previous times, then yeah. He’ll be fine after he sleeps it off.”

Rex pushed himself to his feet and immediately almost collapsed. Ahsoka jumped up to catch him.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, just… really tired all of a sudden. I guess having decades’ worth of aging reversed in minutes can really drain you.”

Ahsoka pulled his arm over her shoulder and let him rest his full weight on her before moving towards his bedroom. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah… I think you’re right…” Rex slurred.

She helped him through the door and onto his narrow bed, and by the time she pulled the blankets up to his chin, he was already dozing soundly.

Ahsoka took a minute to look down at Rex, marvelling at the years that had been erased from his body. He looked a lot like he had when they’d been on the run together after the end of the war, only a little more grey and worn. Her heart leapt into her throat.

Ahsoka returned to the living room to find Din relaxing on the couch, one hand raised up to the floating pram and holding the dozing child’s hand.

“How is he?” Ahsoka asked.

“He seems fine. Won’t be totally sure until he wakes up, though,” Din said.

“I’m sorry. It’s hard to have to wait and see.”

“It should be alright. Odds are good.”

“Well, it’s a parent’s job to worry, isn’t it?” Ahsoka asked, as if she had any experience with either side of the parent-child relationship.

“...Yeah.”

He seemed reluctant to say any more, so Ahsoka sat down on the couch next to him and settled in, content to occupy herself until Rex woke up.

Ahsoka closed her eyes to meditate, but her racing mind instead focused on the future. All she wanted to do was find a peaceful place (preferably not here) to spend the rest of her life with Rex. But she had an obligation to train the Force-sensitive child now, and she had no idea if Rex would want to spend the rest of his days with her either.

“So…” Din said, interrupting Ahsoka’s reverie, “I thought Jedi weren’t supposed to have relationships.”

Ahsoka raised a brow marking in Din’s direction, her lekku darkening despite herself.

“They weren’t,” she said, playing it cool. “But I’m not a Jedi, and the Order has pretty much been decimated anyway. I suspect the next generation of Force users will make their own rules.”

“So the kid would be able to do what he wanted?”

“Even if he wanted to call himself a Jedi, he’d be free to reform the order how he saw fit,” Ahsoka said. “And to be honest, the Jedi order needed reform long before it fell.”

Din let go of the child’s hand and turned his attention more fully to Ahsoka. “How so?”

“Well, the attachments rule, for one. I barely knew my parents because I was taken to the order at such a young age, and this was seen as a good thing—a way to avoid strong emotions.”

“So none of the Jedi ever knew their parents?”

“Not well,” Ahsoka said. She’d never heard of anyone being inducted into the order any older than Anakin, and he’d still been quite young. “The idea was that strong feelings for individuals could lead to anger and hate, which would lead you to misuse the Force.”

Din fell silent for a long moment, his helmeted head turning back towards the child resting in the pram.

“I’ve seen some of the things the kid can do, if he thinks I’m being threatened,” he said eventually.

Ahsoka’s eyes widened in surprise. “Like what?”

Din looked away from the child and didn’t answer.

“Din, if I’m supposed to be his teacher I need to know,” Ahsoka said.

Din cleared his throat, then said, “My friend and I were arm wrestling. The kid misinterpreted the situation, and he started choking my friend. From a distance. With his little hand wave thing.”

Ahsoka’s orange skin lost some of its color. “Well…” she said, starting off slowly. “That technique is considered a Dark Side technique. But context is important, and he thought he was protecting you.”

Silence filled the room, and Din’s helmeted head turned away from Ahsoka.

“I don’t think that necessarily means having parents is bad for Force-users,” Ahsoka said carefully. “A… close friend of mine was very close to his mother and also had a secret relationship while he was in the Order. He later fell to the Dark Side, but I can’t help but wonder if he’d been taught to manage his relationships and the emotions that came along with them instead of being forced to hide them… I think things would have been different.”

Din didn’t respond, and Ahsoka could practically see the cogs of his mind turning. She could sympathize. She didn’t think the Jedi ways were all correct, but if not their rules, then whose? And who wanted to be the test subject for what it meant to be a Light Side user after the fall of the Order?

“Going to the Dark Side… That means being a bad person?” Din asked, breaking his silence.

“It means using the Force for selfish or power-hungry purposes,” Ahsoka said. “The ability to use the Force puts us at an advantage over other people. Those who fall to the Dark Side can cause…” she paused, thinking of a flaming ship doomed to crash with her friends onboard, “immeasurable amounts of pain to others in their pursuit of power.”

“Well if there’s any chance of me causing the kid to go that way, I should avoid that at all costs, shouldn’t I?”

“Even if you do everything right, there’s always a chance a Force user will turn to the Dark Side. If you ask my personal opinion, the child will only benefit from having a father who cares about him as much as you do.”

“...I hope so,” Din said, his hesitation clear in his bearing and voice.

“Anyone who’s able to do what your son did today has an empathetic and loving nature,” Ahsoka said firmly. “He’ll be fine. The Force brought the two of you together for a reason, and that usually only happens for the very deepest and strongest of relationships.”

The Mandalorian let out a heavy sigh. “It always seems to come back to the Force. Sure would be nice if it felt like my life was directed by some rules I could actually understand.”

Ahsoka smiled. “I’m sure you understand more than you realize.”

He gave a noncommittal nod, then turned back to the child, taking the tiny limp hand in his. Ahsoka had spent enough time with the reticent Mandalorian to understand when a conversation was over. She decided to try meditating again and failed once again, this time falling into a deep sleep.

* * *

A frightened shout startled Ahsoka to wakefulness, and she jumped up off the couch.

“I think your friend needs your help,” Din said, head gesturing towards Rex’s room.

Din was standing over by the pram, pulling the fussing child out of his bed and shushing him. The noise must have also disturbed the child.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got the kid,” Din said, and that was all the encouragement Ahsoka needed to run for Rex’s door.

“Fives… Fives… Fives!”

Rex was thrashing to and fro in his bed, eyes open but unseeing, fingers clenched tightly in his sheets. Ahsoka ran to his side and held onto his shoulders in a firm but gentle grip, trying to keep him still.

“Rex! Wake up, you’re alright now, everything’s alright.”

It was a lie, of course. Rex was in no immediate danger but the things he was dreaming about, memories of Fives and Tup and Jesse and his other brothers—that would never be alright. Still, Rex’s eyes focused on Ahsoka’s and he calmed, his heart rate slowing and his arms stilling.

“Commander?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Where am I?”

“You’re at home, on Kamino,” she said gently. “What do you remember?”

Rex sat up and held a hand to his forehead, close to the scar where his chip had been removed. “You came here with that Mandalorian and… and a baby like General Yoda. And… I’m younger now.”

“Yes, that’s right. ...And it’s Ahsoka, Rex. Not Commander.”

“I remember. I was just confused for a minute.”

Rex relaxed and his breathing slowed as he settled back in the bed. The wide neck of his loose shirt opened wider, and Ahsoka tried not to stare at his finely-contoured chest. Ahsoka’s motivation for reversing his advanced aging had been entirely to add more years to his life, but now she was beginning to fully appreciate the added benefit of his restored body.

Ahsoka turned her gaze pointedly to Rex’s face. “That’s understandable. You’ve been through a lot.”

Ahsoka sat down on the bed by Rex’s side and Rex looked down at her hand, his fingers inching slowly towards hers.

“I, um… Also seem to remember you saying that you… ahem… love me,” he said, eyes still downcast.

Ahsoka stretched her fingers out to his and caught them, curling them up into her palm. “Yeah, I said that.”

“I’m not going to pretend that’s easy for me to process,” Rex said, his hand fidgeting in her grip. “You were off-limits for so long, both according to the regs and just… in my own head.”

A chill settled over Ahsoka’s heart, and her fingers went rigid around Rex’s. He wasn’t rejecting her exactly. In fact, Ahsoka felt fairly confident she could convince him to stay with her. He was used to doing what she asked, after all. But what would that mean, _convincing_ someone that they wanted a romantic relationship? Especially someone who’d been born and raised to follow your commands?

Ahsoka swallowed thickly and blinked back tears. She couldn’t let him see her cry.

“That’s alright, Rex. I knew it was a long shot anyway-”

“I didn’t say I don’t want you,” Rex said, turning his palm under her hand and interlocking their fingers together. “It won’t be easy for me to process, but I want to. And… maybe you can help me.”

Ahsoka’s face flushed and her mouth went dry. Rex leaned forward and slowly moved his other hand to her lek, his thumb stroking carefully down its length from her ear to her shoulder. She shivered and wondered if he knew how intimate a gesture it was, how sharply aware she was of the texture of his thumb, of the heat of his hand. She suddenly felt way in over her head. This was what she’d wanted but she was already overwhelmed. Her free hand darted up to catch his, and he immediately retreated.

“Sorry-”

“No, it’s… you didn’t do anything wrong.” Ahsoka said, reaching for his retracting hand and pulling it back towards her. She now held both his hands in hers, and she forced herself to look him in the eye.

“It's been a long time,” she said, feeling utterly ridiculous. She was 46 years old, a former commander, then a spy, now a master user of the Force (if not a Jedi Master), and she felt just like a teenager again. Still, all those years of experience taught her that at the very least, it was best to acknowledge one’s own gaps in understanding. “I’m a little out of my depth,” she said. _And it feels different with you._

Rex laughed, the stricken look fading from his face. “Me too.”

“Really? Was there anyone... before?” Ahsoka asked.

Rex shrugged, looking sheepish. “I mean, there were _some_ … I met a woman or two at 79’s.”

Ahsoka’s gut clenched, but she tried to force the feeling away. She had no reason to be possessive of Rex’s past. He was his own man, and she’d hardly been a teenager at the time he was describing. Still, the thought of him with someone else felt _wrong_ , no matter how much she told herself she was being illogical.

“...But it never went very far,” Rex continued. “Fraternization of any kind was discouraged by the higher ups. And then after the war I was always on the run and aging rapidly. I didn’t want anyone to get caught up in that.”

“Well, at least one of those problems is solved now,” Ahsoka said.

Rex chuckled then pulled one of his hands away from her, holding it up wonderingly in front of his face. “I still can’t believe it.”

Ahsoka shifted on the bed so she was facing him more fully, one leg folded in front of her and the other hanging off the side. “Well you’d better believe it, because you’re stuck aging like a regular human for the rest of your life.”

He smiled again, a soft, indulgent smile. “Thank you,” he said, taking her hand again. “I never would have done this if you hadn’t bullied me into it.”

“Bullied?? I was merely presenting the… the...”

He silenced her faux outrage by pulling her towards him, slow but inexorable as a tractor beam. As she drew nearer he closed his eyes, but Ahsoka didn’t, wanting to witness for herself that this was really happening. Thirty years after she’d first started to feel more for her captain than she knew was appropriate, she would finally know what he felt like.

For all his talk of inexperience, Rex kissed her with the decisiveness of a soldier. He pressed his lips to hers, and the sensation was both more thrilling and more mundane than Ahsoka had anticipated. At the end of the day it was just skin on skin, but it was _Rex’s_ skin, and he _wanted_ to touch her. At least, she hoped he did. In the back of Ahsoka’s mind the worry that Rex’s training and programming might be behind this niggled at her, but then Rex’s hand slotted into the space between her cheek and her lek and pulled her closer and all conscious thought ceased.

Ahsoka leaned further into him and her hand rested on his chest, her fingers sinking into the muscle beneath. The wiry, aged body he’d woken with that morning had been transformed back to his middle-aged strength, and Ahsoka was fascinated to finally feel a figure that had been so familiar to her by sight.

Rex inhaled sharply and his other hand wrapped around her waist. His mouth moved more fluidly against hers, and Ahsoka’s heart leapt in her chest in a way it hadn’t in years. She’d spent decades too far away from him and now she couldn’t get close enough. She lifted herself onto one knee on the bed and shifted closer, her knee moving to rest between his. He made a soft noise and shifted closer to her, his open-mouthed kisses warm and soft against Ahsoka’s mouth. His tongue brushed hers and she lost her precarious balance and started to fall, and he tried to steady her with a hand on her thigh. Ahsoka’s instant, bodily reaction to his bold touch only unbalanced her more, and she sat backwards on his legs. They fell apart in an awkward heap, and Ahsoka caught his eye, their faces both flushed and wide-eyed.

“Ah, my bed is a little small, sorry,” Rex said.

“That’s fine,” Ahsoka said, holding his molten-gold gaze for as long as she could stand before looking down at her lap.

“Well, ahem. I think I managed to do some processing…” Rex said after an awkward pause.

Ahsoka looked back up at him, struggling to maintain her normal aura of confidence. “And?”

“Does your offer still stand? To stay with me for the rest of our lives?”

“Of course.”

“Well then that’s what I’d like. Wherever you go, I go.”

“Are you sure?” Ahsoka asked.

Rex’s eyes narrowed, and he studied her for a long moment.

“I know you’re worried,” he said eventually. “Worried that because I called you Commander for so long, this isn’t really my choice. I understand your concern but eventually you’re going to have to trust what I say I want and why.”

Ahsoka looked up at him through her lashes, shrugging and feeling chagrined. “I do trust you. It’s just you’re such a good soldier. Almost too good...”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t respect you nearly as much as it seemed. I just had to make sure you always felt like you were in charge,” Rex said, completely deadpan.

Ahsoka punched him in the arm, and he laughed as he shook his arm out.

“Did I hurt you?” Ahsoka asked, suddenly worried.

“No, just still feeling a little sore.”

“Tired?”

Rex nodded. “Yeah, whatever that kid did really took it out of me.”

“You should get some rest,” Ahsoka said, getting up to leave.

Rex caught her arm. “I said I’d stick with you. Stay.”

Ahsoka’s eyebrow markings climbed nearly into her headdress.

“Not like that,” Rex huffed. “Just… stay.”

“...Alright.”

Rex scooted over on the narrow bed and Ahsoka filled the space he left behind, resting her head on his arm. She placed a tentative hand on his torso, loving the feeling of his dense weight next to her. Her concerns about his agency and the truth of his feelings faded away. This was Rex. He’d managed to avoid Order 66 and fought hard to be able to make his own decisions. She could trust that.

She closed her eyes and felt at peace, suddenly filled with absolute certainty that this was as the Force willed it. She shifted closer to Rex, her arms pulling tighter around him.

“I love you,” Rex murmured into her montrals.

“I know.”


	4. Din

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end! I'm a little worried about the pacing here, but hopefully it turned out alright. Some of the Mandalorian traditions are taken from legends. Let me know if there's any lore weirdness--I'm trying to keep it as canon as possible.

The kid was alright, and for that Din was eternally grateful. He should have thought more before agreeing to Ahsoka’s request, should have remembered how healing had affected him in the past. There wasn’t much to be done about it now, but it certainly didn’t help Din’s feelings of inadequacy.

Ahsoka’s old soldier friend seemed to be doing better, too. He wasn’t screaming from the other room any more, which seemed like a good sign. Din briefly considered getting up from the couch and checking on Ahsoka and Rex, but he had a feeling they wouldn’t appreciate the encroachment on their privacy. Din didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but being around two people who obviously had some kind of romance developing between them was uncomfortable and he’d rather avoid that situation if possible.

The child’s cooing drew Din’s attention, and he looked down at the kid’s giant black eyes staring up at him from the pram. The child tilted his head, one large ear folding gently against the side of the pram, and Din couldn’t help a wry half-smile. He was fond of the kid, there was no use denying it.

“What?” Din asked, leaning closer to the pram. “You got something to say?”

The kid burbled and shook his head, and Din laughed, reaching a hand out to bat at the child’s other ear.

“That’s what I thought,” Din said.

The kid and Ahsoka would get along well, Din could tell. Din could always tell if the kid liked someone, and these past few days had shown Ahsoka to be a smart, compassionate person well-equipped to train someone like the child. He’d miss the kid, of course, but at least Din would know he was in good hands.

The kid’s burbling suddenly dropped to a low tone, and something shifted in his dark eyes that seized Din’s attention. Brows furrowing, Din stared back at the kid, feeling as if the child could stare right through his helmet and into his mind. The kid slowly reached out a hand toward Din, and whether by the Force or of his own volition, Din’s hand moved to meet it. The child’s tiny claws reached around Din’s hand, grabbing as much of his large palm as his tiny fingers could reach. Din could even feel the claws through his gloves as slight points of pressure on his hand.

The kid cooed again, low and serious, and Din couldn’t look away from his wide, earnest eyes. Din swallowed.

_If you ask my personal opinion, the child will only benefit from having a father who cares about him as much as you do._

Din turned his head away from the child, but couldn’t bring himself to pull his hand from the tiny grip. The child was practically glowing with loving affection, and Din couldn’t stand it. _I don’t deserve this._

“I’ll find the best place for you, kid,” Din said, believing that the child would somehow understand his intentions. “I promise.”

The child let out a single, plaintive cry, and Din gently pulled his hand away, getting to his feet and walking to the other end of the room. The air was suddenly suffocating, and he could barely stand the confines of his helmet.

Laughter filled the room as Rex and Ahsoka walked in, large smiles plastered on their faces. It was obvious that something had happened between them, but in that moment Din couldn’t care less.

“When are we leaving?” he asked, and Rex and Ahsoka both looked over at him in surprise, their good humor interrupted.

“I hadn’t really thought about it yet, but we could leave any time,” Ahsoka said, looking to Rex for confirmation. He nodded his agreement.

“Then where should I take you? Where do you want to start the kid’s training?” Din asked.

“Oh, well, I’d have to give that some thought-”

“You have a ship on Hosnian Prime, right? I’ll just drop you off and you can figure it out from there.”

Ahsoka looked at Din in concern. “What’s the rush? Don’t you want to know where we’ll be going?”

Din turned his head away and looked at the ground, his fists balling up at his sides.

“Din? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said a little too sharply. “It’s my responsibility to see the kid settled, so I want to get that done as soon as possible.”

Rex walked over to Din and clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, brother. We’ll make sure everything’s sorted out. I think I can be ready to leave by tomorrow. How does that sound ‘Soka?”

“Yeah…” Ahsoka said hesitantly. “I guess there’s no reason to linger.”

“You’re coming too?” Din asked Rex.

“Yessir, if you wouldn’t mind an extra passenger. I’ll be leaving this place for good, so help yourself to whatever you want in my cellar before we go.”

Din actually _did_ mind last minute additions to his passenger list, but he supposed Rex could pay for his passage with a generous helping of weapons and ammo. “Fine.”

“I’ll make dinner. We can eat early so we can get an early start tomorrow,” Rex said, already heading for the kitchen.

Ahsoka made to follow Rex, but Din paused her with an outstretched hand.

“Do you mind watching the kid for a minute? I need a breath of fresh air,” Din said.

“Sure, no problem.”

Din turned on his heel and left the claustrophobic house, fleeing to the wide metal platform on which the _Razor Crest_ parked. He walked to the edge of the platform and sat down, his legs dangling off the edge over open water and his arms resting on the lower rung of the protective railing. There was something profound about the endless ocean stretching out in front of him, but he still wished he had more options for locations to brood.

He wondered idly what his covert would think of him now, hiding out in the middle of nowhere with a Jedi baby and two Clone War veterans while they tried to negotiate child care for the kid. The Armorer herself had declared that Din was to look after the child until his people could be found, so no one could argue that this wasn’t The Way, but it still felt pretty far removed from what he’d been trained to do. Death Watch in particular was always talking about the importance of strength, how might was the ultimate form of moral correctness. Whether that was true or not, combat training didn’t feel particularly useful to his current task.

Din’s thoughts wandered to his conversation with Ahsoka several days ago. She hadn’t thought much of Death Watch, and as he’d grown older Din had also come to realize some of the imperfections of the group that had saved his life. Despite all that, he didn’t regret the life they’d given him. No matter their weaknesses, they’d made him believe that there was still someone left in the galaxy who gave a damn about him; they’d helped him feel like he had purpose and direction. If they’d found a living uncle or cousin of Din’s who’d been willing to take him in, Din would have said no.

Perhaps the kid felt the same way?

Din stared down into the churning ocean beneath his feet, their bottomless depths reminding him of the kid’s eyes. The kid was… he was a source of light in Din’s harsh, violent life. He was strong, stronger and braver than any child his age had any right to be. And whether Din liked it or not, those dark, weighty eyes seemed to see him as a father.

Din shook his head to clear his murky thoughts and got to his feet, turning his back on the ocean and walking back into the house. He nodded his head to Ahsoka, who was playing her floating catch game with the kid, and passed through the living room and into the kitchen.

Rex opened up the cellar at his request, and Din spent the rest of the afternoon with Rex’s extensive collection, deciding which pieces he wanted to add to his own weapons locker. It was a meditative sort of activity, and Din took his time appreciating each piece, getting a sense for its quality and history before making his decision.

At the end of the bunker-like cellar Din found a set of old GAR armor, the white and blue faded and terribly out of date in design. It was the helmet that stuck out to Din—it had that oddly angular look the older Clone Wars armor had, and just above the t-shaped visor lay a pair of sharp jaig eyes.

“Hey Din, dinner’s ready,” Rex called from the ladder into the cellar.

“Hey, what’s this?” Rex asked, picking up the helmet.

“What?”

Rex climbed down the ladder to see what Din was holding and smiled once he saw the armor.

“That’s just my old helmet from the beginning of the war. It was a nightmare to get back but I’m glad I managed it,” he said.

Din’s gloved finger traced one of the hawk-like eyes. “Why does it have jaig eyes?”

“Oh, that,” Rex said. “Well, us clones had our own sort of culture between us, but we didn’t really belong to any particular society. Some of the boys like to fill in the gaps with Mandalorian traditions, since we were cloned from Jango Fett and the early clones were trained by Mandalorians.”

Din decided not to bring up the controversy around the Fetts and whether or not they could claim Mandalorian heritage. Jango had certainly considered himself Mandalorian, and it didn’t seem right to begrudge the clones their adopted heritage. By all accounts the clones had been skilled, dedicated warriors, and most of them had died in battle. If anyone embodied the Mandalorian spirit, a group of men born, raised, and sacrificed for war would.

“How’d you earn them?” Din asked.

“In officer training right here on Kamino. The Republic hired some Mandalorian vets to train us, and somehow I impressed them.” Rex shrugged, crossing his arms across his chest. “I like to think I really earned them at Geonosis, though. Training is one thing, but you can’t really prove much until you’ve actually been tested in battle.”

The jaig eyes were a sign of great honor and respect among Mandalorians, and as brief a time as Din had known Rex, his instincts told him they were well-earned.

Din nodded and set the helmet back down. “You said something about dinner?”

Din followed Rex back up to the kitchen and helped him set out the food. Soon enough Ahsoka, Din, Rex, and the child sat around Rex’s square table, a plump roasted fish laid out on a platter between them. Din cut off about a quarter of his portion of the fish for the child, saving the rest to eat himself in private, then held a forkful out for the kid. The kid eagerly ate up the fish, his surprisingly sharp teeth making short work of it. He wrinkled his nose a bit as he swallowed, and Din knew it was because he preferred his meat raw.

“Oh, he really likes meat!” Ahsoka said, surprised.

“Yeah, the little guy’s definitely a carnivore,” Din said.

“We’ll have to make sure we have the right food stocked for him when we head out,” said Rex.

“I was thinking of going to Ossus,” said Ahsoka. “I heard rumors of an old Jedi temple there. There aren’t many settlements, but plenty of easy prey for the little guy to eat.”

Rex grimaced. “You’re a little odd, Commander.”

“Stop calling me that,” Ahsoka said, though this time it sounded more perfunctory than angry.

“You’re right, I really shouldn’t use military titles for my wife,” Rex said.

Din dropped the piece of fish he was about to put in the kid’s mouth and his eyes darted over to Ahsoka. She looked just as surprised as he was. “I didn’t realize you two were married,” Din said.

Ahsoka looked at Rex with raised eye markings. “We’re not…”

Rex returned Ahsoka’s confused look with a flustered one. “Apologies, Comman- Ahsoka,” he corrected. “We both grew up in communities without any kind of marriage traditions, so I assumed lifelong commitment would be equivalent.”

Ahsoka’s lekku darkened in what Din assumed was the togruta equivalent of a blush. “Oh… I suppose that’s true. It still seems like we’d need to formalize it somehow before it’s official.”

“With what kind of ceremony? It’s not like I’ve ever seen a clone wedding or a Jedi wedding.”

“I see your point,” Ahsoka said thoughtfully. “And I don’t really remember what the togruta traditions are.”

Din thought Ahsoka’s primary concern would have been that Rex had never bothered to actually propose marriage to her, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Misunderstanding aside, they seemed in complete agreement on one thing: they wanted to be married. It was kind of sweet, if a bit uncomfortable for Din to be in the middle of.

“Why not exchange Mandalorian vows?” Din asked. Rex and Ahsoka turned to him in surprise and he shrugged. “They’re quick and simple. You could even say them right now if you wanted.”

“How does it work?” asked Ahsoka.

“You just recite the pledge. _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde_.”

Din had always liked the wedding vows—simple and powerful, like the Mandalorian way. As impossible as it seemed, he hoped that one day he might be able to say those vows himself.

“What does that mean?” Ahsoka asked. “I wouldn’t be promising my children to Mandalore or anything like that, would I?”

“You don’t have any children, Ahsoka,” said Rex.

“That’s beside the point.”

“It translates to ‘We are one when together, we are one when parted, we share all, we will raise warriors,’” said Din.

As he spoke Din wondered why he was getting invested in their relationship. What did it matter to him if they got married? It all seemed pretty last-minute and impulsive to him. If he was being honest, though, Din found himself eager to see the two of them happy. He saw a lot of himself in their tired eyes and weary souls, and if they could be happy then maybe there was hope for Din.

“Well Ahsoka, what do you think? Are we going to raise warriors?” Rex asked cheekily.

Ahsoka grimaced. “Maybe not in the Mandalorian sense. But I guess I’d like to think that anyone we raised would fight for what was right.”

It was a fast and loose interpretation of the vow, but Din figured it was good enough. The Mandalorian wedding vows were meant just for people like Rex and Ahsoka: warriors with little time or inclination for elaborate ceremonies but with strong desires to solidify affection, loyalty, and commitment.

“Ok then let’s do it after dinner,” Rex said, an infectious smile on his face. “Then I can finish packing.”

The kid burbled happily, and in no time they’d finished off the fish. Din cleaned up the dishes while Rex and Ahsoka went to find nicer clothes to wear. Din told them dressing up was entirely unnecessary for the ceremony, but they both seemed to want to make it special in whatever small ways they could.

They met in the living room, Ahsoka wearing a short maroon dress with several daring cutouts and a bronze headdress. Rex had buzzed his blond hair short and was wearing an old officer’s dress uniform that must have been at least several decades old. It was an odd combination, but the happiness on their faces was undeniable. Din tried to set himself at ease to not detract from the joyful atmosphere, but he wasn’t exactly in his element. The kid floated in the pram next to him and he seemed to soak up the positive feelings from the ether, giggling happily and waving his hands enthusiastically at the bride and groom.

Rex held Ahsoka’s hands up between the both of them. “You sure you want to be stuck with me forever?” he asked, then his joking tone turned serious. “You deserve better than an old soldier who’s seen too many battles for his own good.”

One corner of Ahsoka’s mouth raised in a wry smile and she looked up at him with clear eyes. “I’ve never been more sure of something in my life.” She raised a hand to his cheek. “And I get to decide what and who I deserve.”

The slightest of smiles graced Rex’s lips, and Ahsoka’s hand returned to his. He squeezed her hands tight and recited the vows.

“ _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde_.”

“ _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde_ ,” Ahsoka repeated back to him.

Rex beamed down at Ahsoka, and she pulled him in for a fierce kiss, her arms wrapping around his shoulders and her hand threading through his short hair.

“That’s not part of the ceremony,” grumbled Din under his breath.

Ahsoka pulled away from Rex and the light of adoration shone in both their eyes. It was a relief to see that two people who’d been through as much as they had could still feel this kind of joy.

“Congratulations,” Din said.

The kid squealed in delight, his version of congratulations communicated even more effectively.

“Thank you,” Ahsoka said.

“Thanks, brother,” Rex said.

Din smiled at the couple, though they couldn’t see his expression. Seeing Rex’s hand in Ahsoka’s felt right, even though Din still barely knew the two. He thought of communal meals in the covert, of Sorgan, of simple pleasures.

Wanting to give the newlyweds a bit of privacy, Din gave his excuses and walked the kid into the kitchen, then leaned against the wall and wondered how long he should give the couple before getting back to preparations for their departure. The kid looked up at him with wide, delighted eyes, his tiny mouth turned up into a pointy-toothed grin. Din couldn’t help but love the kid’s smile, and he thought about what it would be like when he walked away from that smile for good once he dropped the newlyweds and the kid off on Ossus.

Din remembered the child’s scared cries when the client took him away after paying Din his camtono of beskar. Din hadn’t been a much more trustworthy caretaker than the client at the time, but the child still hadn’t wanted to leave him, still had some instinctual sense that Din wouldn’t hurt him. Poor kid didn’t even know what was good for him.

The kid’s eyes focused more sharply on Din and he grabbed onto Din’s cloak, tugging down on it to get Din’s attention. Din met the child’s gaze and was overwhelmed by a sense of grounding, like a tree planting roots deep into the earth. A weight settled on him, and he felt drawn towards the kid like a moon towards a planet. Somehow Din knew what he was feeling was coming from the child, and though the child’s thoughts still couldn’t quite coalesce into words, his meaning was clear. _Stay._

Din frowned, heat stinging at his eyes. He couldn’t stay. It was for the best. The kid would understand, in time.

The child’s tugging grew more insistent, and he let out a plaintive cry. _Stay._

Din screwed his eyes shut and his fists balled up at his sides. Ahsoka’s words came to his mind, _I get to decide what and who I deserve._

Din held out against the child’s entreaties for as long as he could. He wasn’t right for the kid. He’d screw things up. The kid would be better off without him. He knew that. He _knew_ that.

The memory of the child’s scared face as the Imps took him away hammered at Din’s defenses, and like a dam Din’s denials burst. He couldn’t abandon the child now, not after all they’d been through together, not after what the kid meant to him. Worthy or not, he couldn’t just disappear from the child’s life forever. Worthy or not, he had a duty, a responsibility, a privilege.

Din crouched down so his face was level with the child’s and he carefully extricated the kid’s fingers from his cloak, taking the tiny hand in his.

“Don’t worry, kid. I’ll always be here for you,” he said.

The kid beamed at him, and Din felt all the tension drain from his body. He wasn’t confident that he could be what the kid needed, but at least the kid believed in him.

“Hey, Din,” Rex said, as he and Ahsoka walked into the kitchen. “You can start moving whatever you want to take from the cellar onto your ship. Let’s try to get an early start tomorrow.”

Din rose to his full height, but he kept the child’s hand in his, wanting the kid to understand that he wasn’t going to change his mind. “Already back to packing?” Din asked.

Rex shrugged. “I came here to die. Now that I suddenly got an extra few decades and a new life, I don’t see any reason to stay a minute longer.”

Ahsoka’s lekku blushed and she shoved Rex lightly on the arm. “Who knew you could be so sentimental.”

“Only with the right inspiration,” Rex said.

Ahsoka choked in surprise, her lekku flushing even darker. “Anyway,” she said, attempting to change the subject, “Din, I was thinking we could go straight to Ossus tomorrow. There’s a small spaceport on the northern hemisphere that you can drop us off at.”

“Sure,” Din said easily. He felt so much more relaxed now, so much freer. Funny how more responsibility could somehow make his burdens feel lighter. “I can stay with you for awhile, too.”

“Oh?” Ahsoka asked, surprised.

Din shifted from one foot to the other. “Yeah… I might not be able to stay all the time, but I’d like to come visit and check up on the kid. Frequently.”

“That would be great,” Ahsoka said, smiling. “I’m sure Little Green would love that.”

“‘Little Green’?” Din asked, a slight frown on his lips.

“Yeah,” Ahsoka said. “If you think I’m going to call him ‘kid’ all the time, you’re crazy.”

A word came to Din’s mind, one he’d been thinking of frequently but whose meaning he’d consciously avoided.

“Dral,” Din said.

“What?”

“His name. His name is Dral.”

Ahsoka and Rex exchanged glances.

“So you decided to name him?” Ahsoka asked.

“If I find his people and they tell me he already has a different name, they can use that,” Din said, “but this is the name I give him as his father.”

The kid burbled from his pram, and Din crouched down by his side, looking seriously into his face. “Do you like it, kid? Sorry I didn’t ask you first.”

The child smiled, and Din took that as permission.

“It’s a good name,” Rex said. “Suits him.”

“Dral…” Din said, holding a finger out for Dral to grab and testing the name out on his tongue. He liked it. It felt right.

“I think it will be good for you to come see him often,” Ahsoka said. “I might be his master, but you’ll always be his father.”

Din looked up at Ahsoka’s face, a warm, gentle expression on her face. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I think you’re right.”

_The End_


End file.
